1943. In the name of science, HG Wells agrees to sample a new drug designed to speed up both body and mind.

Read by Robert Bathurst

The Seventh Dimension - The New Accelerator
First broadcast: Sat 21st Jan 2006, 18:00 on BBC 7

"The New Accelerator" is a 1901 science fiction short story by H. G. Wells, first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1901. The story addresses an elixir, invented by Prof. Gibberne, that accelerates all of an individual's physiological and cognitive processes by some orders of magnitude, such that although the individual perceives no change in themselves, the external world appears almost frozen into immobility, and only the motion of most rapidly moving objects – such as the tip of a cracked whip – can be perceived. [WIKI]

The New Accelerator features a fascinating depiction of the invention of what sounds a lot like an amphetamine (though technically they had already been invented a dozen years earlier).

A friend of H.G. Wells is on the verge of making a scientific breakthrough which promises to revolutionise human life – so the two friends decide to road-test the new drug – with exciting but dangerous consequences.

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